New Robotic Surgery System at Wellstar Kennestone Brings Next-Level Care to the Community

De'sa Fuller, an assistant principal in West Georgia, greeted teachers in the hallway like every other morning. But her day turned upside down when she lost her balance and couldn’t rise from the floor. Thanks to the immediate actions of those around her—from the teacher who called 911 to emergency medical services and her Wellstar team—De’sa recovered and is back to school. Her story is a powerful testament to how recognizing symptoms of a stroke, calling for help right away and having highly coordinated care can lead to remarkable outcomes.

Getting help when things go wrong

At 34, De'sa Fuller was living a vibrant life. She was a 6th grade assistant principal at Gardner Middle School in LaGrange. She loved her job, enjoyed traveling and was saving up to buy her first home. April 15 started out like any other day. Smoothie in hand, she greeted teachers in the hallway as she made her way to her office.

“I felt a little off,” De'sa recalled. “I just thought I was going too fast—I didn’t put much thought into it.” Then she fell. A concerned teacher asked if she was okay. De'sa, thinking she had simply tripped, said “Yes.” Her vision blurred as she tried to get up and she fell again. “I said, ‘I am not okay.’”

What began as a typical morning turned into a race against time. One teacher's quick thinking to call 911 activated a rapid chain of events that would save De’sa from permanent disability.

The critical first minutes

“The ambulance got there quickly. It was like they were around the corner,” De'sa remembered. 

“We got a call that EMS was bringing in a female who had been found on the floor at work, experiencing right-sided weakness,” explained Ginger Truitt, stroke coordinator at Wellstar West Georgia Medical Center, a Primary Stroke Center. The EMS professionals also reported confusion, headache and vomiting. “Those symptoms suggest stroke. We activated quickly.”

As a result, Dr. Reginald “Ashley” Orr, an emergency medicine physician, was ready for her arrival. 

“I was worried about an acute stroke by their description of her symptoms,” he remembered. “I evaluated her on the stretcher when she came through the door.”

A Code FAST was called with the goal of speeding up the time to start treatment to improve De’sa’s chances for better outcomes. They skipped the emergency department and took her for a CT scan. Then she was seen by the onsite neurologist, and the team quickly administered tenectoplase—or TNK—a clot-busting drug.

“Her symptoms were markedly improved,” Dr. Orr noted. “She was more awake.”

However, the CT angiogram showed an MCA M1 occlusion—a blockage in a major blood vessel in the brain. While she had shown some improvement, it wasn’t enough. De'sa needed a thrombectomy, a procedure to remove the clot and restore vital blood flow to the brain.

A seamless transfer

De’sa needed an immediate transfer to a thrombectomy center, and there are only a few in the state of Georgia. After a quick virtual consult with Dr. Ovais Inamullah, a telestroke neurologist at Wellstar Kennestone Regional Medical Center—a Comprehensive Stroke Center—she was accepted for transfer. The Marietta-based Neuro Care program performs one of the highest volumes of thrombectomy and aneurysm treatments in the country.

Because time is of the essence with successful stroke treatment, transport by air is preferred. However, weather conditions threatened the flight’s safety. The ground EMS crew dutifully stood by in case they needed to drive De’sa. 

Mercifully, the clouds lifted after a few tense moments and she began her trip to Wellstar Kennestone via helicopter.

“When we have this type of emergency, our goal is to get patients out the door for a thrombectomy in 90 minutes,” Ginger said. “In De’sa’s case, we did it in 102 minutes, which was still impressive because there was cloud cover and we weren’t sure at first if she would be able to fly.”

Upon arrival, De'sa was taken directly to the angio suite where Dr. Ahmad Khaldi, a Wellstar neurosurgeon, and his team were waiting. “Every minute counts,” he emphasized.

A thrombectomy is a procedure that treats a stroke without open brain surgery. A tiny catheter is threaded through a blood vessel in the arm or leg to the brain to remove a clot, restoring blood flow to help prevent permanent disability or even death.

“We finished surgery by 11:25 AM,” Dr. Khaldi said—just 20 minutes after the procedure began.

When Dr. Earl Stewart thinks about health equity, he thinks about patients who delay care because they can’t take time off work, who are seniors silently battling chronic disease in food deserts and who live in communities hit hard when summer heat bears down on the South.

“Health equity,” he said on  The Weekly Check-Up podcast, “means making sure every person, regardless of ZIP code, income or background, has access to the care they need delivered with dignity.”

Dr. Stewart is the medical director of health equity at Wellstar and an internal medicine physician. He’s at the forefront of building a more just healthcare system rooted in listening, proactive outreach and community-based care. His work is redefining what community health looks like in practice.

Health equity starts with access

One of the biggest misconceptions about health equity is that it’s only about insurance coverage. But that’s just the starting point.

“Access doesn’t mean only having a clinic nearby or having insurance,” Dr. Stewart said. “It means that care is affordable, culturally competent, geographically reachable and provided in a way that meets people where they are.”

In Georgia, especially in urban and rural areas, barriers to healthcare can have many forms: long travel times to the nearest physician, language barriers, gaps in preventive care and social factors like food insecurity and housing instability. Each of these affects whether patients seek care at all and what happens when they do.

That’s why Dr. Stewart is helping lead efforts at Wellstar to address care beyond hospital walls, including thinking outside the traditional healthcare model.

Food as medicine for chronic disease

Health happens everywhere, not just in exam rooms. For example, conditions like diabetes and hypertension, wo diseases that disproportionately affect ethnically minoritized and low-income populations, are directly linked to access, or lack of access, to healthy food options.

Wellstar is working to reduce the health impact of food insecurity and chronic disease across the state through:

• Fresh food as medicine initiatives
• Mobile Markets in partnership with Goodr
• Partnerships with local organizations

“If you don’t have access to healthy foods, your ability to control your blood pressure or manage your blood sugar is already compromised,” Dr. Stewart said.

By addressing food insecurity head-on, Wellstar isn’t only treating illness—we’re preventing it through community investment and education.

Mobile health removes barriers

For patients who can’t easily get to a clinic or pharmacy, Wellstar is bringing the clinic to their neighborhoods. Through mobile health programs, including pop-up clinics and food markets, patients can get screened for high blood pressure, pick up healthy groceries or receive preventive education.

“These programs reflect a shift in strategy—from reactive to proactive and from system-centered to patient-centered care,” Dr. Stewart said. “This is PeopleCare in action.”

“Mobile care gives us the chance to address healthcare access in a tangible way,” he added. “It removes barriers before they become complications.”

Health risks presented by climate

In a season of extreme and dangerous weather events, Dr. Stewart noted the connection between climate and health risks, especially for older adults and low-income populations.

“We see emergency department visits spike when the temperatures rise,” he said. “Older adults, people who work outdoors and people with chronic heart and lung conditions are especially vulnerable. Heat isn’t just a weather issue—it’s a health equity issue.”

For communities with limited cooling, transportation or healthcare providers, rising temperatures create a dangerous, often deadly situation. Dr. Stewart sees climate resilience as part of the activities needed to build health equity, calling for stronger connections among climate data analytics, care strategies and community outreach.

Leading with empathy & listening with intention

Health equity starts with listening. Dr. Stewart grounds his leadership in the belief that every patient story matters and empathy is as important as data to the future of healthcare.

With Wellstar Mobile Markets, social determinants of health screenings and mobile health outreach units, Dr. Stewart, the Wellstar Center for Health Equity team and Wellstar clinicians are working to transform healthcare from the inside out.

“Equity is not just the right thing to do morally,” he said. “It’s how we get better outcomes for everyone.”

Hear the full conversation.

Robert Frederick was living a typical life, going to work and spending time with his mother, siblings and children. But then it became hard to breathe when walking short distances or climbing stairs. He got dizzy. Perhaps most disturbingly, he passed out several times—once at a Braves baseball game he attended with his siblings.

"I didn't know what was going on!" Robert recalled.

Difficulty controlling AFib with medication

After passing out the first time, he went to urgent care and was then taken to the hospital by ambulance. He learned his symptoms were caused by atrial fibrillation (AFib), an irregular heartbeat.

Robert began to see Dr. David Caras, a Wellstar general cardiologist, and learned AFib is related to high blood pressure. Successfully managing high blood pressure often helps people keep AFib under control. Despite their efforts, AFib sent Robert to the emergency room two more times.

Suspicion of HCM

Dr. Caras reviewed Robert’s hospital records and found he had increased wall thickness of the left ventricle and a gradient—a pressure difference between the left ventricle and the aorta when the heart pumps. These findings were consistent with a condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). Characterized by abnormal thickening of the heart muscle, this disease makes it difficult for the heart to pump blood effectively.

Dr. Caras referred Robert to Dr. Melissa Burroughs, an HCM specialist at Wellstar. As a Center of Excellence designated by the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Association, Wellstar is one of the leading providers of comprehensive HCM care in Metro Atlanta.

"We have physicians in the group—designated HCM specialists—that are the point person of the patient’s care," Dr. Burroughs explained. “This includes close communication and collaboration with electrophysiologists, surgeons, advanced heart failure specialists, social workers and behavioral health professionals.”

A rare finding leads to Mayo Clinic Care Network collaboration

Robert said, “Dr. Burroughs wanted to do genetic testing to verify that I had HCM."

But genetic testing revealed a rare genetic variant—one not known to be associated with HCM. Dr. Burroughs called it a “diagnostic conundrum.” The genetic variant found was typically associated with a different cardiac disease that Robert did not have. However, he did have clear signs of HCM.

To investigate further, Dr. Burroughs collaborated with other HCM experts through the Mayo Clinic Care Network, of which Wellstar is a member. Mayo Clinic, which is also an HCM Center of Excellence, provided access to its unpublished database, finding Robert’s rare mutation was present in two other family groups with HCM.

“It’s very important that we add to the science—that we include our patients in the registry to enhance what is already known about HCM,” Dr. Burroughs said.

Robert added, “Dr. Burroughs is very persistent. She wanted to know, ‘Why are you having these problems? What’s the root cause?’ She went above and beyond to find that out.”